Thread by @LysanderBoomer

Cheap booze recipes? Sure why not.

Ingredients:
- 64 oz container of the organic lemonade from Aldi for like $3
- instant yeast
- 2 1 liter plastic bottles, very clean
- erythritol or other artificial sweetener (optional)
- maltodextrin (very optional)
- bentonite (optional)

Pour off some lemonade leaving an inch or more of headroom.
Pour 2 cups or so into a clean container and mix in the following:
150-200g erythritol
1/4 tsp maltodextrin
Shake vigorously. Add back to main container and shake.
Add 1/4 tsp yeast.
Replace cap, loosely fitting.

Place container in a tray of some kine and store in a warm room away from sunlight. Ideally at room temperature, slightly warmer is better than colder.

Leave for 2 or 3 days. If it smells off or starts visibly growing anything, dispose of it.

After 3 or 4 days, mix a teaspoon of bentonite into hot water and let sit until cool. Add the mix into the bottle and place in fridge for 24 hours or so until it clears a bit.

Decant leaving residue into your 1l plastic bottles.

Enjoy your refreshing hard sparkling lemonade.

With SAF yeast I've regularly hit 5-7 abv with this and the results are quite refreshing. You can add less erythritol or skip it altogether if you don't like sweet drinks, the results without the sweetener are quite drinkable.

Your total cost is approximately 4 dollars for ~2 liters of quite good sparkling hard lemonade.

Now, to do it right you would want a hydrometer, sanitization tablets, a funnel, graduated cylinder (for taking specific gravity measurements), and a fermentation vessel with a proper airlock.

You can get by without all that but you may end up throwing a few batches away for contamination etc.

That said, I've had good results with the process exactly as described.

The bentonite is used to clear the yeast haze, if you want a clearer beverage. Otherwise you can skip it. Make sure it is food grade.

The maltodextrin adds a bit of body. The fermentation sort of thins out the result and a tiny whiff of maltodextrin will give it some mouthfeel without adding any flavor. It isn't super fermentable so you aren't driving up the abv at all with this. The existing sugar is plenty.

The artificial sweetener is there to replace the sugar that ferments off. If you add in a bit of table sugar just before bottling you can often get a more brisk carbonation but you risk the bottles exploding, be careful and use plastic.